96 Students, Others Arrested in Massive Drug Raid at San Diego State University

Ninety-six students, local gang members and others were arrested Tuesday in a massive drug raid at San Diego State University.

Drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana and methamphetamines were confiscated in the sting, which came as the result of a months-long undercover operation, according to officials with the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Many of the students arrested were members of the Theta Chi and Phi Kappa Psi fraternities. One of the gang members taken into custody allegedly has ties to Mexican drug cartels.

The DEA said a member of the Theta Chi fraternity sent out a mass text message to his “faithful customers” stating that he and his “associates” would be unable to sell cocaine while they were in Las Vegas over one weekend.

In addition to large quantities of narcotics, money and weapons were also seized from sellers and buyers in the bust.

Authorities confiscated two kilograms of cocaine, about 350 ecstasy pills, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamines and illicit prescription drugs, as well as several guns and at least $60,000 in cash.

Undercover officers in “Operation Sudden Fall,” as it was called, conducted more than 130 drug purchases with sellers, authorities said.

Officials said they were surprised by the sophistication of the campus smuggling and trafficking network.

Several of the 96 defendants — 75 of whom are students — were appearing in state court to face charges Tuesday afternoon.

Eighteen of the students were arrested Tuesday when nine search warrants were executed at various locations, among them fraternities.

The undercover sting was spawned by the drug-overdose death of a college student last year.

-foxnews.com

Microsoft withdraws bid for Yahoo

Software maker walks away after it says it
raised its offer to $46 billion – says economics demanded by Yahoo ‘do
not make sense.’

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Microsoft Corp.’s pursuit of Yahoo Inc.
ended abruptly Saturday when the world’s largest software maker
withdrew a sweetened $46 billion offer and said it would not make a
hostile bid for the Internet company.

Microsoft said the
breakdown came despite having raised the bid to $33 a share, or $5
billion above what it said was the current value of the offer and a 70%
premium compared to its original offer.

The offer was valued at $31 a share when it was made in January. Yahoo stock closed Friday at $28.67 a share.

“After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) do not make sense for us,” said Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) CEO Steve Ballmer.

In
a letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, Ballmer said that Yahoo
wanted at least another $4 a share, or $5 billion in value, added to
the deal, bringing it to at least $37 a share.

Ballmer also told Yang that taking the offer directly to shareholders would not be “sensible.”

“This
approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and
eventually an exchange offer,” Ballmer wrote. “Our discussions with you
have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that
would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.”

Ballmer said he was concerned that a further collaboration between Yahoo and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) – which he called “the dominant search provider” – would make an acquisition undesirable for several reasons.

Yahoo officials indicated their pleasure with the end of the Microsoft bid.

“Our
independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief
that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that
so many of our shareholders in expressing that view,” Yahoo chairman
Roy Bostock said.

Yang, in the same statement, called the
Microsoft bid a “distraction” and said that Yahoo will now focus “on
executing the most important transition in our history so that we can
maximize our potential.”

Microsoft: We’ll do it without Yahoo

Microsoft indicated that it will proceed with a Web advertising strategy.

“We
have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our
business through innovative new services and strategic transactions
with other business partners,” Ballmer said. “While Yahoo would have
accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move
forward toward our goals.”

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to compete with Google for billions of advertising dollars shifting to the Web.

A
marriage between Microsoft and Yahoo had been widely considered by
analysts as inevitable. “As we have indicated since 2/1, we think MSFT
will eventually acquire YHOO at a price not materially above the value
of its initial offer,” wrote Scott Kessler, an analyst with Standard
& Poor’s, in a report earlier this week.

Microsoft fears that
Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick – the world’s biggest online ad
server company and big player in the increasingly lucrative market for
online display ads – will allow the search giant to seize an even
bigger portion of the ad market as Microsoft’s MSN falls further behind.

Microsoft
made a public offer to buy Yahoo on Jan. 31, two days after the
Internet portal reported weak quarterly earnings and a disappointing
outlook for 2008.

Yahoo was an impressive target. It is one of
the last independent Internet companies with massive scale. In March,
it was the top-ranked site in the United States with 139 million unique
visitors, according to comScore, which tracks Web audiences. Google was
second and Microsoft was third.

What might have been

A Microsoft-Yahoo combo could have offered even greater scale and attracted more advertisers.

None
of that persuaded Yahoo, however. Though the value of the company’s
stock has risen more than 40% since Microsoft made its offer, its board
said the proposal “substantially undervalues” the company.

Throughout
the past three months, Yahoo had said it was not opposed to a merger if
Microsoft offered the right price. But it also sought alternatives.
When no white knights came to the rescue, Yahoo in recent months
pursued other tieups with Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500) (parent of CNNMoney.com), News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500) and Google.

But any involvement with Google could raise antitrust issues.

Yahoo’s
two-week test running Google’s search ads caught the attention of the
U.S. Justice Department. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said a
Yahoo-Google collaboration would “consolidate over 90% of the search
advertising market in Google’s hand.”

Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis.,
the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, said last
month that “should there be moves to make this agreement permanent, we
will examine it closely … to ensure that it does not harm
competition.”

On Saturday, Ballmer struck a generally cordial tone with Yang, even as he criticized Yahoo for rejecting Microsoft’s offer.

“I
still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative
put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for
their shares,” Ballmer wrote. “By failing to reach an agreement with
us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the
table.”

“But clearly a deal is not to be,” Ballmer added. “Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.”

Scott Moritz and Yi-Wyn Yen of Fortune contributed to this article.

One boy, one girl — one dorm room

(AP) — Erik Youngdahl and Michelle Garcia share a dorm room at Connecticut’s Wesleyan University. But they say there’s no funny business going on. Really. They mean it.

They have set up their beds side-by-side like Lucy and Ricky in “I Love Lucy” and avert their eyes when one of them is changing clothes.

“People are shocked to hear that it’s happening and even that it’s possible,” said Youngdahl, a 20-year-old sophomore. But “once you actually live in it, it doesn’t actually turn into a big deal.”

In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some baby boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.

At least two dozen schools, including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, allow some or all students to share a room with anyone they choose, including someone of the opposite sex. This spring, as students sign up for next year’s room, more schools are following suit, including Stanford University.

As shocking as it sounds to some parents, some students and schools say it’s not about sex.

Instead, they say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

“It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you,” said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Massachusetts, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. “Students aren’t doing this to make a point. They’re not doing this to upset their parents. It’s really for practical reasons.”

Couples do sometimes room together, an arrangement known at some schools as “roomcest.” Brown explicitly discourages couples from living together on campus, be they gay or straight. But the University of California, Riverside has never had a problem with a roommate couple breaking up midyear, said James C. Smith, assistant director for residence life.

Most schools introduced the couples option in the past three or four years. So far, relatively few students are taking part. At the University of Pennsylvania, which began offering coed rooms in 2005, about 120 out of 10,400 students took advantage of the option this year.

At UC Riverside, which has approximately 6,000 students in campus housing, about 50 have roommates of the opposite sex. The school has had the option since 2005.

Garcia and Youngdahl live in a house for students with an interest in Russian studies. They said they were already friendly and didn’t think they would be compatible with some of the other people in the house.

“I had just roomed with a boy. I was under the impression at the time that girls were a little bit neater and more quiet,” Youngdahl said. “As it turns out, I don’t see much of a difference from one sex to the other.”

Garcia, 19, admitted: “I’m incredibly messy.”

Parents aren’t necessarily thrilled with boy-girl housing.

Debbie Feldman’s 20-year-old daughter, Samantha, is a sophomore at Oberlin in Ohio and plans to room with her platonic friend Grey Caspro, a straight guy, next year. Feldman said she was shocked when her daughter told her.

“When you have a male and female sharing such close quarters, I think it’s somewhat delusional to think there won’t be sexual tension,” 52-year-old Feldman said. “Maybe this generation feels more comfortable walking around in their underwear. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Still, Feldman said her daughter is partly in college to learn life lessons, and it’s her decision. Samantha said she assured her mom that she thinks of Caspro as a brother.

“I’m really close to him, and I consider him one of my really good friends,” she said. “I really trust him. That trust makes it work.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press

World’s First Commercial Flight Powered by Biofuel

Virgin Atlantic carried out the world’s first flight of a commercial aircraft powered with biofuel on Sunday in an effort to show it can produce less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels.

Some analysts praised the jumbo jet test flight from London to Amsterdam as a potentially useful experiment. But others criticized it as a publicity stunt and noted scientists are questioning the environmental benefits of biofuels.

“This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected,” Sir Richard Branson, the airline’s president, said before the Boeing 747 flew from London’s Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

He said the flight would provide “crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint,” he said.

Sunday’s flight was partially fueled with a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil in one of its four main fuel tanks. The jet carried pilots and several technicians, but no passengers.

/**/

Virgin Atlantic spokesman Paul Charles predicted this biofuel would produce much less CO2 than regular jet fuel, but said it will take weeks to analyze the data from Sunday’s flight.

“It’s great that somebody like Richard is willing to put some of his billions into an experiment aimed at reducing the climate change impact of aviation,” said James Halstead, an airline analyst at the London stockbroker Dawnay Day Lochart.

“But there are a lot of unanswered questions about the usefulness of biofuels in the battle against global warming,” he said.

The flight is the latest example of how the world’s airlines are jumping on the environmental bandwagon by trying to find ways of reducing aviation’s carbon footprint.

These efforts have included finding alternative jet fuels, developing engines that burn existing fuels more slowly, and changing the way planes land.

The experiment by Virgin Atlantic and its partners — Boeing, General Electric and Imperium Renewables — also comes at a time when high oil prices and the U.S. economic slowdown are promoting consolidation in the airline industry.

Aircraft engines cause noise pollution and emit gases and particulates that reduce air quality and contribute to global warming and global dimming, where dust and ash from natural and industrial sources block the sun to create a cooling effect.

About a year ago, the European Commission, the executive of the European Union, said greenhouse gas emissions from aviation account for about 3 percent of the total in the EU and have increased by 87 percent since 1990 as air travel cheapened.

Charles said Virgin’s Boeing 747-400 jet and its engines did not have to be redesigned to use biofuel on the test flight.

He said CO2 emissions on a normal flight are generally three times the fuel burned, and that technical engineers on the test flight would take readings and analyze data to estimate its greenhouse gas emissions.

-from FoxNews.com

Poor People Use Yahoo, Richies Use Google

Hey, don’t kill the messenger. But online marketing firm Hitwise has published a socioeconomic demographic rundown of Yahoo and Google users. And, without giving too much away, you might not want to tell your friends that you still use Yahoo (or that your Armani suit is a knock off).According to Hitwise data and this Lifestyle Quadrant Analysis, while lots of people are using Yahoo search (those are the dots in the upper left), groups that have spent more that $500 or more online tend to use Google (those are the dots in the lower right, the bigger dots designate $500+ spenders). So while Yahoo has the “struggling societies” market cornered, Google is fairly pleased with their “affluent suburbia” and “upscale America” user base.

Obama, McCain sweep Potomac primaries

While Sen. John McCain was inching toward the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama staked a claim as the Democratic front-runner.

Obama’s wins in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia primaries propelled him past Sen. Hillary Clinton in the race for delegates.

According to CNN calculations, Obama has 1,215 delegates to Clinton’s 1,190.

To clinch the Democratic nomination, a candidate must get 2,025 delegates.

Obama had led in pledged delegates, but Clinton had held the lead when superdelegates were factored in.

Superdelegates, a group of almost 800 Democratic Party officials and leaders, are not required to make their votes public and are free to change their minds.

The Illinois senator has now won eight consecutive contests.

McCain, the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, has 812 delegates to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 217, according to CNN estimates.

GOP candidate needs 1,191 delegates to secure the nomination.

“The change we seek swept through Chesapeake and over the Potomac,” Obama told supporters Tuesday night.

“We won the state of Maryland. We won the commonwealth of Virginia. And though we won in Washington, D.C., this movement won’t stop until there is change in Washington, D.C., and tonight we’re on our way.”

Obama did well with Democrats across race and gender lines Tuesday night, and seems to be eating away at Clinton’s backbone of support: women.

According to exit polls out of Virginia and Maryland, Obama won roughly 60 percent of the female vote — a demographic that has carried Clinton to success in past primaries. Clinton fared worse among men — more than two-thirds in both states chose Obama.

Meanwhile, Obama scored his highest percentage of African-American support to date, winning close to 90 percent of that voting bloc in each state.

The two evenly split the white vote in Virginia, while Clinton slightly beat Obama among whites in Maryland.

In most past primaries, Clinton has held an edge among white voters. Tuesday, Obama even beat Clinton among Latino voters, a group that has heavily favored Clinton in most past primaries.

In Virginia and Maryland, Latinos went for Obama over Clinton by 6 points, though their support was not decisive in either contest — only 5 percent of Democratic primary voters in Virginia and 4 percent in Maryland were Latino.

The only demographic Clinton won was white women, who broke for her over Obama by 10 points in Virginia and 13 points in Maryland.

Clinton turned her attention to Texas, which holds its primary on March 4.

-from CNN.com

Obama wins Maine caucuses

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will win Sunday’s Democratic caucuses in Maine, sweeping the weekend’s presidential contests.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Obama was leading Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York 59 percent to 40 percent. At stake are 24 delegates to August’s Democratic national convention in Denver.

Obama’s projected victory follows a sweep in Saturday’s Louisiana primary and Democratic caucuses in Nebraska, Washington and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Those contests gave him a lead over Clinton in pledged delegates to the convention, but Clinton still held a narrow edge over Obama when “superdelegates” — elected officials and party leaders — are included in the tally, according to CNN estimates.

After Saturday’s results and a split decision in last week’s Super Tuesday contests, Clinton shook up her campaign Sunday by replacing campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime adviser Maggie Williams, her campaign announced Sunday.

-CNN.com

HPV increasingly causes oral cancer in men

The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study.

The HPV virus now causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol, probably due both to an increase in oral sex and the decline in smoking, researchers say.

The only available vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co., is currently given only to girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government permission to offer the shot to boys.

Experts say a primary reason for male vaccinations would be to prevent men from spreading the virus and help reduce the nearly 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in U.S. women each year. But the new study should add to the argument that there may be a direct benefit for men, too.

“We need to start having a discussion about those cancers other than cervical cancer that may be affected in a positive way by the vaccine,” said study co-author Dr. Maura Gillison of Johns Hopkins University.

The study was published Friday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

-MSNBC.com

 

NASA photos reveal Mercury is shrinking

The first pictures from the unseen side of Mercury reveal the wrinkles of a shrinking, aging planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped like a spider.

Some of the 1,213 photos taken by NASA’s Messenger probe and unveiled Wednesday help support the case that ancient volcanoes dot Mercury and that it is shrinking as it gets older, forming wrinkle-like ridges. But other images are surprising and puzzling.

The spidery shape captured in a photo is “unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere in the solar system,” said mission chief scientist Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The image shows what looks like a large crater with faint lines radiating out from it.

Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has often been compared to Earth’s dull black-and-white moon. But the new photos, which reveal parts of Mercury never seen, show the tiny planet is more colorful and once had volcanic activity.

With the help of NASA high-tech enhancement, Messenger photos showed baby blues and dark reds.

“It has very subtle red and blue areas,” said instrument scientist Louise Prockter of Johns Hopkins University, which runs the Messenger mission for NASA. “Mercury doesn’t look like the moon.”

The last time a NASA spacecraft went to Mercury was Mariner 10 in 1975. It took pictures of just 45 percent of the planet.

Messenger, which will do a couple more flybys of the planet before going into a long-term orbit, already has taken pictures of another 30 percent of Mercury, Prockter said. The rest will be seen eventually.

Planetary scientist Robert Strom, who was part of both the Mariner 10 and Messenger teams, said, “This is a whole new planet we’re looking at.”

And Prockter noted “there are some features we haven’t been able to explain yet.”

Example No. 1 is what scientists are calling “the spider.” It is in the middle of a basin formed billions of years ago when space junk bombarded an infant Mercury.

Mariner had only seen part of the crater. When Messenger took a look with sharper cameras and a better angle, it photographed this odd central plateau jutting up, about half a mile high with dozens of tiny ridges radiating out.

It is as if “something is pushed up,” said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber, who is part of the science team.

Prockter guessed that it could be remnants of a volcano. Other scientists think the leg-like features could be the same ridges seen all over Mercury.

First seen in the 1970s, the ridges now seen more widely provide evidence that Mercury is contracting, the scientists said.

Scientists had theorized that as the core of Mercury cools, it contracts and the whole planet shrinks. That was even a 19th Century theory for why Earth had mountains, but one that later proven wrong, Solomon said. But with Mercury that seems to be the case. As the planet shrinks, a bit of crust is pushed over another, forming what Prockter calls “wrinkle ridges.”

Besides having what looks like the leftovers from volcanoes, Mercury has at least one crater that seems to be filled with what would be that planet’s version of lava, Prockter said.

NASA launched the $446 million Messenger on its nearly 5 billion-mile mission in 2004. It will fly by Mercury two more times, this October and September 2009, before settling into orbit around in 2011. Messenger will take pictures, measure the planet’s tenuous atmosphere, hills and valleys and unusual magnetic field � Mercury is the only solar system planet other than Earth to have a magnetosphere.

Quirky Mercury is one of the bigger question marks in the solar system, probed not nearly as much as Mars, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn.

Strom, a retired University of Arizona scientist who worked on Mariner 10, said that as he awaited Messenger’s flyby earlier this month, “I couldn’t sleep at all. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve.”

Only he had to wait 30 years for his presents. It was worth it, he said: “What I saw was astounding to me.”

-yahoo.com

Edwards’ voters up for grabs

Former Sen. John Edwards dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday, leaving his voters up for grabs.

The race for the Democratic nomination is now down to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

“I think both candidates will benefit in the short term, but long-term, the candidate who talks about the plight of the poor, that champions the middle class, that talks about trade and health care … will benefit from the support of John Edwards and, of course, the people who back him,” CNN political analyst Donna Brazile said.

Senior Edwards aides said Edwards called Clinton and Obama to tell them he was considering dropping out of the race and asked them to make poverty a central issue of the general election and a future Democratic administration, something both agreed to do.

Edwards, who had collected 26 delegates, did not plan to endorse Clinton or Obama yet, but he may do so in the future, an aide said.

-cnn.com